Case Study: Bacardi_

Bacardi chooses Talmundo's Onboarding App as central part of its upgraded global new hire experience.

4

Continents

6,000

Employees worldwide

1,300+

New hires onboarded

4.75/5

User rating

2014

Client since

Corina Kromhout

Global Learning & Development Specialist

Corina is the Global Lead for Bacardi's onboarding experience, responsible for the design of process and technology implementation globally.

Bacardi teams up with Talmundo to welcome their new hires

With our unique software solution, Talmundo helped Bacardi unify their global employee onboarding strategy, new hire welcome toolkit and content delivery approach, making sure every new Bacardi employee is equipped with the right company information from the start, no matter their location or role. Corina Kromhout, HR Manager EMEA, shares her experience and HR insights with us.

"With one push of a button I can change something, and it’s live everywhere."

The need for change_

Bacardi used to have a traditional e-learning approach to onboarding that was too complicated and expensive to update regularly to meet their evolving people and business needs. They were looking for something that would provide that flexibility, reduce time and money spent on updating HR content for new joiners as the company evolves, would add an element of interactivity, and would be delivered to new employees before they start at the office on Day 1.

Before partnering with Talmundo, the process was inefficient and often ineffective--a new hire would sign a contract, then “everybody did their own local thing” which varied at each location and depended on the local line managers’ initiative and commitment to onboarding.

Goals in mind_

Bacardi wanted an employee onboarding solution that was easy to update on both local and global levels, making it accessible for all local HR teams and allowing for multilingual adaptations across the board. Representing the essence of the Bacardi brand spirit throughout new hire welcome activities and implementing a global onboarding toolkit together with Talmundo has been the latest HR journey for the company.

New HR pillars_

Today the new hire experience at Bacardi combines three compulsory elements across borders: A 90-day welcome plan, a buddy system and a mixology training course.

With “pulse checks”, Talmundo’s in-app feedback system, at the heart of Bacardi’s setup, Talmundo helps deliver the 90-day welcome content pack to new employees in a relevant progression with content spread out over time, as well as gives Bacardi an opportunity to collect and measure data on the completion of the three different pillars of their new hire experience.

Defining SMART goals for onboarding helps to ensure the program’s success: “95% of the Bacardi experience has to be completed within the first 90 days”, says Corina.

Data-backed decisions_

Basing their future strategy on data collected via the Talmundo app, Bacardi is now confident in the onboarding choices they are making.

With overwhelmingly positive pulse check results, the future focus is to align offline and online onboarding experiences. For example, the onboarding app gives every new hire contact details for a Bacardi ‘buddy’ they can go to for advice and guidance, but whether the onboardee and the buddy connect in real life is of course up to the individual employees. The goal now is to make sure this and other online milestones start further corresponding with new hire’s onboarding experience at the office.

Moving forward, Bacardi aims to measure more data through the app - compare countries and locations, looking specifically at data on the 90 day-onboarding completion and user engagement in general.

When training HR to be more onboarding-minded and involve all stakeholders directly, you need to “give managers access, because they will know exactly what the onboardees are going through, as well as may have written the content for the app in the first place”.

Why Talmundo?

The Talmundo app not only delivers content to every new hire, but also makes sure line managers and other stakeholders know that someone is indeed joining their department or office - sending notifications to all relevant individuals and building up to a warm welcome.

The Onboarding App starts working its magic before new hires come in for their first day and employee engagement starts as soon as the employment contract is signed.

“Whoever I show it to, everybody loves it. It’s not a hard sell to get HR and other decision makers to like it.”

And the onboarding app adoption across the offices worldwide? Bacardi has it covered.

Bacardi ran webinars to launch their new hire welcome toolkit, including introducing the onboarding app to managers. “It is super easy, I do a one and a half hour workshop and they are good to go. It’s that simple!” says Corina. Clear, active internal communication with all local HR teams accelerated app usage by making sure administrators know their way around it.

Make it personal, make it visual_

Two of the most popular sections in our app are the brand section and pulse checks. But how you share information is vital to overall engagement –infographics and personal stories make the information you are presenting more appealing and easier to internalize.

If you are starting from scratch with onboarding content, prioritize video content and take a more visual approach to showcasing the brand.

Corina explains, “Bacardi focuses on our family history and our values, but we also don’t forget about corporate responsibility.”

"We showed the administrators around the app for an hour and they are good to go! It’s that simple."

The next big thing_

The app helps decrease the need for manual reporting in people management across the whole organization.

Corina shares Bacardi’s plans moving forward, “Getting the local HR teams the right levels of access and translating more content” is the next big step in making onboarding more localized and fully embedded to the local processes while still be structured globally.

Using feedback from their new hires over the last year, Bacardi has now identified its next onboarding challenge--getting a negative mark from a new hire can alert their manager to their needs, as well as create more opportunities for a timely response.

The main goal is still to increase interactivity not only between the new employee and manager, but with their colleagues as well.

Other clients say_

“The crucial goal for onboarding is to reduce the mismatch between expectations and reality.”

Wouter Van Linden | HR Director, KPMG Belgium

“As soon as the Onboarding App went live, it sold itself - it was that easy to implement”.

Xavier Baechler | HR Director & PMO HR Operations, Firmenich

"Talmundo really simplified what was a very lengthy and complicated onboarding processes."